Dusty May, Michigan leaning on winning pedigree, improvement on margins to round into final form
ANN ARBOR – The Michigan Wolverines know they have left some meat on the bone in their 22-7 (14-4 Big Ten) season thus far, but there has not been any chatter of championships and what is on the line in the final month of the season.
Michigan enters the week a game back of the rival Michigan State Spartans for the regular-season conference crown and the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. And even if it misses out on that, there is still a conference tournament and the NCAAs to play for in terms of hanging banners and etching legacies in stone.
But head coach Dusty May says they have bigger priorities than the game results. They are still working to get back to their early-season form, particularly from distance.
”We haven’t talked about how this team will be defined,” May said during his Monday press conference. “We need to play better, we need to build more physicality. We haven’t made better than 35% from three since January 27th. The only thing we’ve talked about when it comes to defining moments is that championships bond them for life as brothers. That’s it… It’s just, if we win a championship, there’s something special that hopefully drives us to work a little harder, to get out of bed with a little hop in our step.
“But for the most part now, we’re not talking about that or how March is. We know what March is. It’s what everyone points to. It is why CBS feels so different on a Sunday in early March. We’ve had, I think, bigger things to talk about.”
May’s roster construction upon his arrival at Michigan had players that came from winning backgrounds as a major data point, as well as some of the skill-set and archetype considerations that go into it. The hope is that the muscle memory of playing in big games and on winning teams will snap the Wolverines out of a funk they have found themselves in over the last 10 days.
That’s been the message from May and the coaching staff.
“We’ve tried to lean on that in the past week, that the guys in our locker room that have won at a high level, they know what it looks like,” May said. “And it takes sacrifice, it takes effort, it takes stamina. I could go on and on about what it takes because it’s really, really hard. I mean, there are 18 teams in our league, with a range of budgets and talent and experience and everything else. And so it’s hard, or else you’d have 18 winners right now.
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“That’s the Big Ten Conference. It’s the second best conference by the numbers right now. So it’s very, very difficult. We’re trying to lean on experience. We’re trying to just pull everything we can out of what it’s going to take to win.
Michigan hopes that improvements on the margins from everyone will help them reach that next level of consistent intensity needed this time of year.
“We’re certainly leaning on that,” May said. “We have some guys in our locker room that have been in different roles. There are a few guys that, the ones at a high level that really didn’t play much, or played minimal minutes and had minimal production. But they at least know what it looks like and they saw the guys doing it, what it looked like.
“I think everyone in our locker room, staff, me, assistant coaches, support staff, players, all need to just find a way to be a little bit better. And I think the cumulative effect will be that we’ll figure out a way to get over the hump.”
